Limbaugh's Out of the Rams Ownership group

Brutally embarrassing for "El Rushbo."

Appropriations Death Match!

A very thorough rehashing of the BAE v. Oshkosh Corp. blood feud.

A Conservative Plan to Boycott the NFL

Go ahead, make Roger Goddell's day!

I was waiting for someone to suggest this, and sure enough I didn't have to wait long.

This losing proposition will only get more ridiculous as the days wear on.

[via M]

Wednesday Morning Link Orgy

• Nothing sketchy about Rep. Steve Buyer ... nothing at all.

• Christopher Hitchens on Monty Python.

• The coming economic culture war.

• The lessons of Communism.

• What the Russians can teach us about oil dependency.

• The Club for Growth is on a mission to render the GOP utterly useless.

• "The USS New York, built with tonnes of steel salvaged from the World Trade Centre towers, began its journey to New York today after undocking from a New Orleans-area shipyard."

Capt. Karl is still a Fucking Whackjob

Jesus, Dude, just shut the hell up.

A Banner Day for the Conservative New Media Program

Honestly, after a day like this heads should be rolling through the halls of conservative new media circles:

1.) GOP.com can't sustain the weight of the public's desire to ridicule it.

2.) The NRCC can't seem to understand what passes for appropriate humor on Twitter.

3.) RedState.com is run by complete and total idiots.

Keep up the great work, folks!

I Thought the GOP Didn't Believe in Affirmative Action?

Seriously, check out the "American Heroes & Famous Republicans" page of the new GOP website.

Of the 18 Republicans featured on the page (only one of whom is still alive, by the way), 8 are African-American, 1 is Latino and 4 are women.

None have been active since 1989.

No one named Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Barry Goldwater, Robert Taft or Jack Kemp is apparently revered as a "hero" in the GOP.

MORE: The new web site is getting panned from a variety of places. I mean it's really taking a beating.

Here's some more clarification on the GOP's appropriation of Jackie Robinson, who was apparently a Republican for quite a while, but whom left the party after what appeared to be a horrifying experience at the 1964 GOP convention. The subject that turned Robinson off of the party? You guessed it: race.

[updated links via M]

Limbaugh and the Rams

This sounds a lot like Goddell's way of saying "don't even bother:"

"I've said many times before we're all held to a high standard here, and I think divisive comments are not what the NFL is all about," Goodell said. "I would not want to see those comments coming from people who are in a responsible position in the NFL, absolutely not."

[...]

Count Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay in the camp against Limbaugh.

"I, myself, couldn't even consider voting for him," Irsay said. "When there are comments that have been made that are inappropriate, incendiary and insensitive ... our words do damage, and it's something that we don't need."

[...]

Prospective owners must be approved by 24 of the league's 32 teams.

Limbaugh will almost certainly get to play the victim card here when his bid inevitably fails, but he'll have no one to blame but himself. Limbaugh's presence in the NFL is nothing but a liability to the League and it's owners.

For one thing, the business model that made Limbaugh very rich is entirely different from the NFL's.

Limbaugh caters to a niche on the radio. It's an enormous niche, but it's still a very small one compared with the audience that consumes the NFL product. Remember, when Limbaugh buys the Rams, he's not just buying athletes: he's also buying into the far more important NFL brand where he will be one of 31 other voices that keep that brand sacred. That means he'll have to be a team player, something he is incapable of doing on the radio.

The NFL doesn't cater to a niche, it caters to America, and in the last decade the league has made aggressive efforts to court Latinos and women (among other constituencies). These are the fans the NFL knows will be important to sustaining growth in the future. They're also frequent targets of Limbaugh's "humor." The NFL has spent a lot of money on advertising and sponsoring things like Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the last few years and all of that work will be instantly negated when Limbaugh makes his first PMS joke as Rams owner.

That conflict will not only be intolerable to the other NFL owners, but to his own ownership partners. This is the Catch 22 Limbaugh will find himself in if he gets the Rams: in order to be a successful owner, he will have to tone down the radio show. If he doesn't, his team will suffer. He can only manage one product at the expense of the other.

This is a stupid business decision by anyone's standards.

Limbaugh will most likely bow out quietly. His partners will realize he's dead weight to their ownership proposal and ask them to withdraw in exchange for a luxury box or something. Again, NFL owners tend to lean conservative, but this will be about business, not politics, and Limbaugh is not good business for the NFL.

MORE: Completely forgot: Although, there have not been any reports to say as much, the odds are against Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney supporting any offer from a group including Limbaugh. Rooney was a vocal supporter of President Obama -- he campaigned for him and even thanked him upon receiving the Vince Lombardi trophy after his team won last year's Super Bowl. He's now the U.S. Ambassador to Ireland.

But more importantly, he's also the man behind the Rooney Rule, one of the most successful hiring policies in professional sports. Rooney, as well as anyone, knows exactly what kind of damage Limbaugh can do to the NFL brand as an owner.

Bravo, Milwaukee!

You can run a marathon better than Chicago ... barely.

Hey, You Know Who Else Got the Holy Shit Kicked Out of Him in His Party's 2006 Primary Election?

Scott Walker.

Flu(erism) Season

There are a lot of nutty theories running wild across the internet these days. Truthers, Birthers, Tenthers, more Truthers, etc. but the one that -- hands down -- takes the cake for sheer enormity of lunacy are the "Fluers." Unfamiliar with these folks? Well, let's meet one.

Ol' Capt. Karl is a blogger from the Peshtigo area and certified Fluer. Not surprisingly, Karl is something of a Ron Paul groupie who espouses several other fringe beliefs like Birtherism and the a passionate dislike of the Federal Reserve, but lately he's putting aside those issues in favor something truly batshit insane: Fluerism.

What's Fluerism? Well, let's take this step-by-step because it's something of a wild ride.

Step 1: "the U.S. Government and the Corporations [have] developed an implantable H1N1 detector Positive I.D. RFID chips."

I know RFID technology sounds scary, but it's not very practical for keeping track of human beings. Besides, there's really no reason to implant chips under human skin when the government can just track someone with the cell phones that most of us carry on our persons these days. Cell phones, however, are good things that bring us convenience. Chip implantation is a scary bad thing -- much more suited for crazy ass conspiracy theories, but not very practical. If Capt. Karl were advocating everyone to throw away their cell phones, no one would listen. Oddly, when he talks about chip implantation, then he gets an audience. Go figure.

Step 2: "Unlike the old larger RFID chip shown in the video, nanites would flow around you body with your blood stream. They could not be removed like the RFID chip in the movie above because they would be racing around your whole body."

Ah, yes, nanotechnology: the conspiracy theorists gift from God -- too small to be seen with the human eye, but capable of just about anything.

Step 3: "Could the U.S. Government force you and your family to accept an injection of the RFID Positive I.D. Chip?"

Did you catch that? "RFID positive"? Makes it sound like the government is injecting people with AIDS...

The rest of the post is unreadable, a combination of poorly cited magazine articles, pharmaceutical industry press releases, and laws that are arranged in no easily discernible order. And this is likely by design: the author has absolutely no proof to back up his mad assertions so he hopes to cloud his reader with enough doubt to make his claims seem plausible. If you have the patience to soldier through it, you're a masochist.

The gist of the post this as follows: at some point in the coming Flu season, the federal government will declare a state of emergency that triggers a series of legal criteria that subsequently requires the vaccination of every citizen from the H1N1 virus.

But it gets better ... or stranger: Capt. Karl believes that those who refuse the vaccination will be rounded up by government, "shackled" with RFID bracelets and taken to "concentration camps" -- his words -- in an attempt to stifle dissent.

Got that?

Does any of that make any sense at all? Of course not, but that's not stopping Karl from putting the cherry on top of this shit sundae. The remaining big question is: why? Take it away, Karl:

We would further ask our readers, isn’t it strange that this so-called “pandemic” is happening, after all these decades of no pandemics, right at the same time The MATRIX (our economy based on Monopoly money that our minds have been programmed to believe is worth 100 cents, when in the ‘real’ world it factually is worth only 2 – 3 cents) is soon to collapse? Coincidence? I don’t know but I think the U.S. Government is trying to sell us a spare bridge.

So the Swine Flu is just a cover to enslave the entire U.S. population because our economy is largely based on credit.

Capt. Karl has no evidence for any of this whatsoever, of course. He's putting this whackjob tall tale together using some videos by anonymous vloggers that are wild-eyed and suspect on even their best days. I don't know how the hell he can say there have been "all these decades of no pandemics" when AIDS, SARS, and avian flu are all fresh in the memory.

I doubt we'll hear the last of Capt. Karl and his crazy Fluerism, and I'm sure this is going to be just the beginning of a long line of paranoid fantasies conjured up in the most fragile minds of the blogosphere. I'd love to live in a world wherein Capt Karl is exiled to the furthest reaches of Crazytown, but I don't plan on seeing that any time soon, which is too bad.

MORE: I can see that I'm going to have lot of fun playing with Capt. Karl in the future.

The ink was barely dry on this post (as it were) when good old Karl decided to chime in with some more "evidence" on the Evil Government Plot to Enslave us All (or EGPEA)!

Karl links to a video produced by Russia Today -- about one of the least credible news sources in the world (here's just one of many RT interviews with Lyndon LaRouche; note how seriously he's taken by the news readers).

It's type of shit like this that does far more harm than good.

"The Board of Elections can suck my dick": A Salute to America's Most Awesome Mayoral Candidates

Bruce Tumin, candidate for Mayor of North Lauderdale, FL:

According to the police report released yesterday, when officers, who received an anonymous call of a loud party, responded to the house, they found Tumin yelling and cursing at a woman who was sitting on a truck.

"Why are you sitting on the truck? Is that your f---ing truck? Who gave you permission to sit on that truck?" Tumin said, according to the report.

When officers approached Tumin, they could "smell a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from the defendant's breath and person," the report read.

The report also noted that Tumin had slurred speech and red, glassy eyes.

When Tumin was ordered to leave the party he gave the classic line, "Do you know who I am?" to officers, according to the report.

Well played!

Tony Phillips, candidate for Mayor of Allentown, PA:

Tony Phillips says he's taken a lot of hits in the past week. And the hits just keep coming. Allentown mayoral candidate Tony Phillips' troubles began a week ago when a woman he had an affair with from 2003 to 2007 tricked him into talking dirty on the Internet. Margarita Lopez - aka Delores - posted the conversation online under the heading "is this the kind of man we want for mayor of Allentown?" But this week, Lopez tells 69 News her motives were not political. Now she says, she wants women to know she's HIV positive and Phillips might have been exposed.

!!!!

Leo Awgowhat, candidate for Mayor of Memphis, TN:

Leo Awgowhat, who explained that he had a multiple personality disorder and was living off government “crazy checks.” (At birth he was known as Jason Wells.) If his chosen — and now apparently legal — last name sounds like part of a familiar knock-knock joke with a profane punchline, it’s because it is. The T-shirt he wore Tuesday night (next to a somewhat grossed-out and ultra-serious ‘Randy Cagle) all but spelled out most of the punchline: “Go —-k Yo-rself.”

Awgowhat, oddly enough, was not the craziest candidate on dais for the recent mayoral debate. (via WS).

But the winner has to go to Jimmy McMillan, candidate for Mayor of New York City:

Shortly after he met with the board to plead his case yesterday, we called McMillan to see what was going on. Barely had we said "hi" before he launched into this expletive-laden tirade (click for audio):

"I had a hell of a day, man. I would love to put on my website that the Board of Elections can suck my dick, I would love to do that, but I got little children going to my website, I can't do it, the motherfuckers. I would love to, before every one of them go to bed at night, suckin' my damn dick. That's what I'd love to put on my website. Every fuckin' one of them, you know.

He added, "I'll put it on my website, fuck the motherfuckers, man." It was at this point we decided to stop Mr. McMillan and get him to speak on the record. Turns out he already had been. "You're saying that everything you just said can be on the record?" we confirmed. "Everything I just said. Suck my fuckin' dick, the fuckin' board, every fuckin' one of them."

Vote McMillan: It's for the Kids!

Bravo, one and all!

Movie Bleg

If you have seen Synecdoche, New York, please tell me what you thought of it.

Much obliged.

Comedy Ain't Easy

Exhibit A.

Name Calling

Kevin Drum calls Mark Levin a pussy.

The Chief's SAT Word of the Day

Merkin

Not Exactly Paul's Conversion on the Road to Damascus

/Facepalm:

“I remember driving over to Madison one day,” recalls Walker, “with two or three other guys in the carpool, and Sykes was on the radio that morning, and Charlie said, ‘you know, Scott Walker should run for county executive.’”

“And then, after I pulled the car back onto the road,” Walker chuckled, “all the guys in the car said ‘why don’t you run?’”

About a week later, according to Walker, he made the decision to declare his candidacy...

What the French are saying about Roman Polanski

Though it's admittedly rusty, The Chief still knows enough French to be able to say that the French-speaking press is much more interesting to read when it comes to whole Roman Polanski arrest. Here are some DIY translations, complete with the original French below.

Feel free to correct any grammatical and/or vocab mistakes in the comments section. There will likely be many.

Henri Bernard-Levi, widely considered to be France's pre-eminent public intellectual, signed a petition that read in part:

We ask the federal Swiss justice system to release Roman Polanski immediately and not to make this brilliant film-maker into a martyr of a dubious judicial-political mess between two democracies such as the Switzerland and the United States. Good sense, as much as honor, suggest as much. [1]

Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the ultra right-wing National Front:

The support which [French Foreign Minister] Kouchner and [French Culture Minister] Mitterrand gave to this criminal pedophile, in the name of the rights of the politico-artistic clique, is scandalous and justifies that one asks their resignation. [2]

"Politico-artistic clique" is an awkward French conservative version of "Liberal Hollywood."

There's a petition being circulated by various French and European film-makers that sort of suggests that Polanski's arrest will have repercussions on artists' ability to speak and travel freely in the future.

Oddly enough, the best answer to the question "Why now?" in any language I've read thus far gets answered in a blog post post in L'Express, which is sort of like the French Time or Newsweek. Here's the whole translation:

By becoming the first DA in California history to be re-elected three times in a row in 2008, Cooley knew how to flex his muscles, particularly in cases which appealed to the popular conscience. His office -- 1000 prosecutors, 800 administrative civil servants, supported by an annual budget of some 350 million dollars -- became famous for tracking down Mexican criminals who had returned to their country after committing murders in California. For instance, diplomatic pressures originating in California contributed to the abolition of an amendment in the Mexican constitution forbidding the extradition of Mexican nationals back to the United States. The lawyers in the DA's office in Los Angeles appear among the best specialists in extradition. [3]

_________
1. "Nous demandons à la justice fédérale helvétique de remettre en liberté immédiatement Roman Polanski et de ne pas transformer ce génial cinéaste en martyr d'un imbroglio juridico-politique indigne de deux démocraties telles que la Suisse et les Etats-Unis. Le bon sens, autant que l'honneur, y invitent."
2. "Le soutien qu'ont apporté MM. Kouchner et Mitterrand à ce criminel pédophile, au nom des droits qu'aurait la caste politico-artistique, est scandaleux et justifie que soit demandée leur démission."
3. "Pour entrer dans l'histoire californienne, en devenant, en 2008, le premier District Attorney de l'Etat réélu trois fois de suite, Cooley a su montrer sa poigne, en particulier sur des dossiers qui marquent la conscience populaire. Ses services, 1000 procureurs, 800 fonctionnaires administratifs, soutenus par un budget annuel de quelques 350 millions de dollars, se sont illustrés dans la traque des criminels mexicains réfugiés dans leur pays après avoir commis des meurtres en Californie. Les pressions diplomatiques émanant de Californie ont contribué par exemple à l'abrogation d'un amendement de la constitution mexicaine interdisant les extraditions de ressortissants de ce pays vers les Etats-Unis. Les juristes du D.A. de Los Angeles figurent parmi les meilleurs spécialistes en matière d'extradition."

What do You Want -- a Fucking Medal?

This is hands down the funniest thing I'll probably read all weekend:

I was a proud volunteer of the Milwaukee Tea Party who could of have watched the Badgers on TV beat Wofford last Saturday, but I volunteered to make the event a success for Americans for Prosperity.

Not the Wofford game!

You're Supposed to Take Out the Trash on Friday!

Not Thursday, gentlemen -- Friday!

• Ron Kind: not running for Governor

• Sheboygan Mayor + Oral Sex = awesome headline!

• Jeff Wood: off the wagon.

KrauseKare isn't much of a Solution

I have to give Jonathan Krause credit for his post this morning. Unlike many people entering into the health care debate, Krause actually proposes real policy solutions for the problem. There's no empty rhetoric about people losing freedoms, no talk of socialism, no threats of pulling the plug on grandma, etc. Just pure policy proposals. These kinds of alternatives have been sorely lacking among those who have spoken out against reform.

Frankly, it's the single most substantive post written in opposition to the President's reform plans we've read from any blogger in Wisconsin.

That being said, there are significant flaws with each of his suggestions. For example, what Krause calls "graduated, flat-tax rates" (Step 5) looks a lot like the "progressive tax" currently in place, eliminating Medicare and Medicaid (Step 1) is next to politically impossible and even Draconian tort reform (Step 6) would do little to stem the tide of rising health care costs. That's half of Krause's health care plan right there.

Yet it was Krause's Step 3 that caused us to do a double take:

Third step--Revise the tax code to exempt all medical expenses incurred by Americans after they have spent 15-percent of the their gross income. I don't think budgeting 15-percent of what you make toward health care is that unfair. And those medical expenses will be a tax credit--meaning every dollar you spend on the doctor or prescription meds means a dollar less you will pay in taxes. That credit includes all premiums paid for private health insurance.

There's a ton to go through here, so this little paragraph right here, which essentially serves as the heart of Krause solution to the health care reform debate is packed with peril. Best to go through them one at a time.

First, I, personally, think spending 15% of my gross income on health care is outrageous. Germans contribute 8% of their incomes to health care and they have universal health care, complete coverage for every individual, no instances of bankruptcy due to health care catastrophes. Germany also does NOT have a public health insurance plan. The catch is that even Germans think 8% is a little on the high end of things. 15% would be, and is, outrageous.

Now, I know that not every one would pay 15% per annum due to varying levels of health and personal maintenance, but Krause seems to suggest that every American should store 15% of their income away in a kind of rainy day health care fund (or HSA) -- can you imagine the ripple effect if up to 15% percent of the American economy was frozen at any given time? It would drive every other industry in the country completely insane.

The said, the thing is that health care is already over 17% GDP right now. Aiming to get it around 15% wouldn't be cutting costs all that much at all. On the other hand, 15% might not be enough if costs continue to rise at the current rates.

Second, 15% means different things to different people. Two people need a kidney transplant that costs, say for the sake of convenience, $50,000. Person A makes $200,000 a year, while Person B makes $50,000 -- then Person A gets a tax credit on the first $30,000 of the transplant, while Person B only gets a credit on the first $7,500. That's unconscionable, especially considering that Person B will likely have a net income of $0 after the operation.

Third, how do people who don't receive income put away money for health care costs? I'm thinking of children and the elderly -- does a parent have to divide his 15% among his three kids (and possibly wife) if he's the bread-winner? If so, doesn't this in effect punish parents for having children? As for the elderly, these are the folks that tend to have the most expensive health care costs and yet the most minimal incomes. How does that get reconciled?

This is why the GOP has been very vocal about it's health care policy alternatives. As long as they don't offer their own solutions, they avoid having to answer question about the policy proposals that were cooked up at the Cato or Heritage Institutes. Again, Krause deserves credit for at least proposing alternatives, but the specifics he provides do very little to offer much in the line of reform.

Jean Schmidt ?!?!

Too good to be true!

Catching Up with Kevin Barrett

Through a long series of free associations I recently found myself on Kevin Barrett's blog last weekend and out of a morbid sense of curiosity I decided to stick around and inspect some of his wares -- really give him the attention that I had not previously bothered to offer.

I now have a confession to make. I have greatly underestimated Mr. Barrett: he's far more batshit insane than I previously understood.

I gotta say, I never gave much thought to how 9/11 Truthers spend their days. I was naively under the impression that they yap about cruise missiles and controlled demolitions and all that jazz -- and to a certain extent this appears to actually be the case -- but, man, by no means do these guys stop waxing crazy with "9/11 was an inside job!" shtick.

Here are a few other assertions Barrett makes on his blog:

• Jews control the media.

• Amy Goodman, anchor of Democracy Now! and Gary Trudeau, cartoonist of "Doonesbury" fame, are both CIA stooges.

• The Mossad was responsible for the "controlled demolition" of the World Trade Center.

• Former Director of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff is an "unregistered agent of a foreign power," legalese for spy.

• The U.S.S. Liberty incident was the result of "treasonous LBJ and his enablers in the secret covert-ops executive committee of the National Security Council collud[ing] with hardline forces in Israel to launch the 1967 war, then attempt to bring the U.S. into the war by attacking the U.S.S. Liberty and blaming it on Egypt."

• Osama bin Laden died in 2001 (!!!)

• The perpetrators of 9/11 are murdering survivors years after the fact.

• Zbigniew Brezezinksi is responsible for the rise of Barack Obama.

• "I like Hamas and Hezbullah, and I don't care who knows it."

• The following were "false-flag" operations carried out by Israel and blamed on Muslims: "9/11, 7/7, London, Bali, Madrid, Bombay, Achille Lauro, Entebbe, Locherbie, and of course the botched Lavon Affair and USS Liberty attacks are examples."

• Boilerplate blood libel (all caps in the original): "ZIONISTS INTENTIONALLY SLAUGHTER PALESTINIAN CHILDREN AS A MATTER OF OFFICIAL POLICY."

• "The caliphate is coming because it is an essential element of the religion of Islam."

• "I certainly do think the prime authors of 9/11 were probably of Jewish ethnicity, yet religiously har[d]core atheists, like their mentor, Leo Strauss."

Wow. I mean, just ... wow. Where does one even start?

My favorite is that Osama bin Laden was killed in 2001. I suppose that would naturally mean this was pre-recorded...

I would suggest that addressing each of these points individually would be a waste of time and that looking at the common theme running through all of these, i.e. that the Jews are somehow responsible for all the ills of the world, would be a far more productive way to expedite this fisking. I'm not sure what came first, Barrett's virulent antisemitism or his nutjob conspiracy theories (though I can offer an informed guess), but the two do seem to have a symbiotic relationship that is hard to ignore.

Barrett's Hebraic hatred isn't just limited to alternative histories. Sometimes it becomes more overt. Apparently Barrett has recently had Kevin MacDonald -- a fringe figure who, I'll just let his Wikipedia page do the explaining -- on his radio show. (MacDonald, you may notice, and much to my chagrin, is a native of Oshkosh). MacDonald is an odious figure who deserves to be denounced in the strongest possible terms. Instead, Barrett merely distances himself slightly only to find value in MacDonald's work: "MacDonald's message should be taken as a warning and a wake-up call," Barrett writes.

No, it shouldn't. Judge for yourselves -- I doubt it will take long for any reasonable person to determine that MacDonald is not a credible thought leader on the subject.

Then there are the times when Barrett is aggressively antisemitic, such as:

A gang of genocidal lunatics, otherwise known as Zionists, has already invaded, occupied, and ethnic-cleansed Palestine, and they are intent on extending their reign of terror to the whole Middle Eastern heartland.

Don't believe me? Take a look at the Israeli flag. See those two blue stripes, one on each side of the star of David? One stripe is the Nile, the other the Euphrates. The Zionist nutballs believe that a genocidal god named Yahwe promised them this entire stretch of land. Sort of like David "Son of Sam" Berserkowitz, these people are hearing hallucinatory voices telling them to engage in mass murder.

The bit about the Israeli flag is classic PLO and Hamas propaganda. The actual symbolism and origins of the flag are far more benign.

There is little that Barret is the kind of person that Richard Hofstadter was thinking of when he wrote "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." The problem is that Barrett's Trutherism is merely a symptom of a genuinely repugnant hatred.

Barrett's yesterday's news. His "run" for Congress was little more than an uncomfortable piece of amateur performance art that exposed his tenuous grasp on reality and deep-seated emotional instability (the press releases alone from his campaign -- alas, no longer available online -- were stunning works of fevered paranoia). Yet as something of the Ur-Truther it's instructive to see how one fundamentally untrue belief -- in this case, 9/11 did not happen like we think it happened -- can lead by corollary to dozens of others.

Far be it for me to ascribe logic to Truthers, but that first step that led Barrett to considering 9/11 a "hoax" led him to an almost fully realized alternate reality. In other words, conspiracy theorists like Barrett don't devote their energies to "proving" an alternative view of one historical event, they quickly move one to others and ascribe the same haphazard skills of analysis infused by an irrational hatred of someone else to those events. In short order they've constructed an entire worldview based a false assumptions and it seems like after a certain point there's no going back.

I hope Barrett is an anomaly and not a harbinger of things to come. He's no longer got the crazy market monopolized -- he's competing with Birthers and neo-Birchers these days and God only knows what else down the horizon. Hopefully he'll just end up as a cautionary tale on the dangers of succumbing to postmodern paranoia and not as the latest incarnation of an all too familiar American political archetype.

Meh

Still throwing up for some reason...

Anyway:

[via Deadspin]

Packers vs. Bengals: Live Blogging Free for All Extravaganza!!!

C'mon on in, folks!

If you're away from a computer and want to chime in via Twitter, just use hashtag #gbpack.

If you're submitting your first comment, it may take a few moments to appear. Don't be discouraged, every comment made after that will be instantaneous.